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A spectre is haunting the globe – the spectre of the New Economy, a phenomenon for which a definitive name has yet to be found and which for now is hidden behind an uninformative signboard. We are going to take a look at it, to see which human practices, already established or still in the making, characterise it, and which of its tools and institutions hold out most promise.

Both the New Economy itself and the lifestyle to which it gives rise are inextricably linked with texts (in the broadest sense of the word): with their production, distribution and consumption. On this basis it is defined as an information economy. A detailed analysis of the New Economy would call for a separate extensive treatise which would only distract us from our topic, so we will restrict ourselves to trying to establish its main distinguishing features.

A little over half a century ago the study of history was given a powerful boost when the school engaged in studying the economies of past eras. On the basis of archive data a start was made at that time on recreating, piece by piece, a picture of material exchange in order to investigate the distribution of wealth, the growth of institutions and the structure of markets. The result was a more complete understanding of the moving forces of history. Today’s priority is quantitative measurement of non-material processes. Without this our understanding of many phenomena is guesswork, and we can only shrug vaguely when asked for precise forecasting of choices society will face. Until recently attempts to calculate anything in the arts got nowhere because we lacked any halfway usable instruments of measurement, but now internet technologies enable us to tear aside the curtain concealing the quantitative parameters of symbolic exchange. There is nothing to keep us from moving from talk to action apart from a firmly rooted conviction that this is beyond our capacity. If thinking in the humanities moves in this direction it can look forward to a new upward spiral of development: if it does not, it faces stagnation.

The mission of the modern economy is to create conditions which enable people to develop their individuality in accordance with their wishes and abilities, while at the same time enabling them, despite all their differences, to live together. A system of groups is not some secondary element of one’s lifestyle, but a fundamental means of enabling each person to realise himself in a circle of like-minded people, while simultaneously localising effects which might be negatively perceived outside the boundaries of that community. In this sense a group-based organisation of life is the most liberal means of balancing the interests of the individual and society. It provides an opportunity, amongst other things, of avoiding the uniformity in everyone and everything which is the direction in which we are nudged by the profit motive with its enthusiasm for standardising products. This is why so much attention has been paid in this book to the institutional development of a group system, which should move in three directions.